Oh dude I SUCK

I broke the rules at H/D LDWS at slythindor100 by posting Sex, Lies, and Videotape. It's similar to the 250 word drabble, Honestly Ever After that I wrote for that competition, and you weren't supposed to post any alternate versions until after the competition was over.

All I can say is I'm sorry! I completely forgot! I forgot because it became a completely different story to me so I wasn't even thinking about Honestly Ever After by the time I got done. I've been trying to write a story with variations on this theme for four years, and it went through so many iterations I can't even keep track of them all. But I am sincerely sorry I posted one before getting to this one, and that now it's causing the mods grief.

What's sad is I was very obediently waiting to post my Unctious Unction one. But I didn't suddenly start to rewrite that one and get sucked into 18000 words of porn which can cause a person to forget you're supposed to OBEY THE RULES.

I'm sorry people, I'm sorry competitors, I'm sorry mods, I'm sorry fans, and . . . goodnight moon? In the future I'll be more law-abiding.

ETA: The story is now flocked, in order to adhere to the rules as much as possible after breaking them.

writing in context when the context is the British Empire

So, I have this North and South fic. This is, of course, Victorian England. In my story, there's a character with a serious case of Orientalism. While this element is not absolutely essential to the narrative, I feel that it connects to important things about industrialization, capitalism, and class that I would like to address. Industrialization, capitalism, and class are probably not essential elements either, as it is in essence a romance, but imo the best romances deal with the ideals and worlds of the participants.

( The problem with writing stories set in a time and place in which no one thought this was a problem . . . )

Here's where the request for help comes in. I had a beta for this fic, by name of kleindog from c-19. I don't know if she is on any of the journaling sites. If so--hi! I stopped writing the story, so stopped sending her chapters. She was doing a very nice job, but I realize what I want specifically for this fic is someone who feels in tune with this issue. There isn't always a way to please everyone, or be non-offensive to everyone. But I really feel like it would be nice to bounce some of this stuff off someone.

The ideal person would be familiar with N&S, period language, the historical context, how not to be offensive, Brit-picking, SPAG, being horribly ruthless to get rid of all my redundancies and awkward language, and would be willing. But I will settle for someone who is comfortable with addressing historical context and not being offensive, even if they don't know the canon, as long as they are willing.

If you don't match that description . . . do you know where I can go to ask for such a beta? N&S is a small fandom, which makes this particularly hard, but again, I'm not even concerned with someone knowing canon, although it might be difficult for someone to be interested in the story if they're not familiar with said canon.